Design of Semi-Self-Checkout Systems at Major Supermarkets

As a "Showa-era person" who only enters a "convenience store" a few times a year, I am not familiar with their payment systems, which only heightens my sense of unease, and I lack the confidence to handle it well even if I go alone 🤣
On the other hand, I am very familiar with and a frequent visitor to grocery supermarkets, and as a non-housewife, I have a deep sense of the "bottom prices" and market rates for various items, so my sensitivity to "buying here rather than at other stores 💴" is decent ✌

That said, an example I encountered the other day at Ito-Yokado, a "shopping mall" type store that I visit only with a frequency that makes me far from a regular, had a good design 🏅

Is there a store in your area?
Have you already experienced the following system?

It is a type of [self-checkout].

There are various types of customers.
Since I cannot be tolerant of people who are slow at scanning & have a large number of items, yet occupy the machine for a long time (⇒ Leave it to the pros! 👊), I especially welcome the [semi-self] system 🙆
~In other words, the front process: scanning is done by the clerk ⇒ the back process: payment processing is done by the customer themselves at the machine

① Here, a system is designed that further divides into two lines

◆ What is the biggest aim/benefit of this? 🤔

⇒ It prevents the situation where a person who is supposed to "breeze through with cashless" is kept waiting by the congestion of a "leisurely cash-handling" type person who was in front of them
⇒ The installed machines are limited to only one of the functions (~cost reduction?)

⇒ The disadvantage is that if there is a possibility of waiting due to congestion/stagnation, a situation where "the other line is empty..." could occur, leading to a sense of disappointment or idle machines

② A camera is properly pointed at it 📹

◆ Now, what kind of deterrent effect does it have against "fraudulent acts"? 🤔👮

③ There is a gate when exiting this area

Of course, it is linked with the data (status) of each payment machine

A mechanism that prevents running away without paying 🚫👮

I experienced this system for the first time and took a picture 📸

What was the "sense of crisis" that intuitively crossed my mind? 🙄

There is a kind of "awareness" that you need to prepare for yourself, rather than for others who might do something wrong, isn't there?

◆ ❖ Pay attention here 🚫 ❖ ◆

After completing the payment process, my companion (family member) held their receipt up to the exit gate!

⇒ It is essential for me, as the "accompanying person," to follow through "promptly" 👣

In fact, whether it was a "timeout" of just a second or two, an alarm went off when I approached the gate 📢

The staff member who reacted immediately glared at me—or rather, cast a look my way—so, despite it being my first time, I happened to be quick-witted enough to immediately say, "I'm sorry, I was a bit slow 💦 I'm with these people 🙏," which allowed me to explain the situation and calm the commotion down ^^;

This design concept and the balance of its settings make for a quite good design 👍
It is much better in terms of practical utility, psychological satisfaction, and crime prevention design than things like "completely unmanned convenience stores" where the pursuit of "automation" takes precedence while missing some of the essentials 💯

On the other hand...

Among the self-checkout counters being expanded to other stores (businesses), there is a certain drugstore chain that uses a "completely unsupervised" style 《a specification that has existed since the beginning: it is not set up so that you must place the scanned item on a "scale-integrated platform" before you can scan the next item—it allows you to just breeze through without scanning 💧》. That is unacceptable 🙅‍♂️

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